Beverly Hills Cop 4: Ratner Haters Are Gonna LOVE This

Less than a week ago we talked about the impending addition to the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, which was to once again star Eddie Murphy and will be directed by the much-maligned Brett Ratner.

Personally, I’m not a Ratner hater, but this news is going to be like throwing bloody fish bait into a shark tank for those who do:

It seems that Beverly Hills Cop 4 is being targeted to kids. Specifically, 10-12 year olds.

Says Ratner:

“10-year-old kids, 12-year-old kids don’t really know the old ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’ So it’s an opportunity to make it new for kids, the same way it felt for me watching ‘Beverly Hills Cop’ when I was a kid, that’s what I want to do for kids today.”

If you’re not familiar with the existing films (the first two of which were pretty damned funny and action-packed), they were R-rated, violent, F-bomb laced extravaganzas – back in the days before Eddie Murphy became “family friendly” and still made movies that were funny as hell. I applaud Murphy’s motives: After becoming a father he wanted to make only movies that his kids could watch. The problem is that for the most part those movies have been awful.

From Ratner’s quote I can’t imagine that he’s planning on making an R-rated movie and encouraging parents to bring the kids. I also can’t see him retaining ANY of the spirit of the original and making this PG… so they must be aiming for that magical and ever-popular PG-13 rating.

The only positive I can think of is that Live Free or Die Hard still managed to be pretty fun even with the PG-13. Of course that doesn’t really have any direct bearing on this movie… so I don’t even know why I mentioned it. :-)